Liu Bolin - Modern Artist Inspiring The Advertising World

Liu Bolin has produced some more great self-portraits for the series Hidden Cities. The latest work brought back an advertising campaign that I had seen around London either early last year or the year before. The series stood out to me because the reference to Liu Bolin series of work. I only knew this because of being at university at the time and stumbling upon him during research for a project I had in mind (which never materialized in the end), the series I felt was a great way to advertise The Prince's Trust help to the young, with a tag-line "Lost Generation" and from afar an urban landscape image that when viewed  more closely you start to see this lost, invisible and upset individual materialize in front of you. When looking for this series I stumbled across a large amount of ad campaigns that have taken direct influence from Liu Bolin, from sports to alcohol and as mentioned the lost generation. With all the campaigns that I have found none have used Liu Bolin himself to create them, except one from Ford, which has a great post on Liu Bolin and how he goes about creating these great pieces of Modern Art.

Gun Culture

Lately guns have been part of the headlines on the other side of the pond. With the recent shooting in Aurora, Colorado and just a few days ago Oak Creek, Wisconsin hitting the British News Channels. I don't know enough about the gun laws in America to be able to argue whether the laws need rethinking or not and that's not what this post about. It is however got me thinking about the projects and documentary films I have looked at over the years. Two that stand out for me as defining the gun culture in America are Zed Nelson Gun Nation and Michael Moore Bowling For Columbine. Zed Nelsons project doesn't delve into the stereotypes expected from documentary essays on guns and gun culture in the States, there is no gang-banger flaunting his stash of weapons, no white supremacist in camouflage in a field doing combat training or a lost teen bullied and influenced by violent video games. Instead Zed Nelson looks at the commercial side of fire arms, the NRA and the law abiding citizens that own a range of weapons. The series delves into how something that is seen as a symbol of freedom is also something that is out of control with around 28,000 people losing their lives to fire arms a year[1] The essay makes you sit back and try and understand Americas fascination with such a deadly item. Michael Moores award winning documentary Bowling For Columbine on the other hand questions the need for fire arms and why people can get their hands on them with ease. In one scene Mr Moore walks into a bank and acquires a rifle for just setting up a bank account with said bank. The film came about when Columbine High School, the teachers and students fell victim to a shooting spree and massacre by two of its very own students on April 20th 1999. Both projects are worth having a look over if you haven't all ready as they will broaden your mind on gun culture in the States and bring you away from the stereotypes we are used to seeing and hearing about.

[1] http://www.americanfirearms.org/images/Chart__big.gif 

6th Rifles

These are some of the portraits from my latest project yet to be titled but this section is called 6th Rifles. The project will go beyond just the 6th Rifles and explore other British Armed Forces Regiment and Corps. Once I have settled down in London I plain on starting the next part of the project. So keep an eye out for the next update.

F.ThirtyEight and Graduating

The last year has been very busy for me, I've Graduated with a BA Honours in Commercial Photography from the Arts University College at Bournemouth. Along with that I was marketing manager and catalogue designer for the F.ThirtyEight Graduate Exhibition at Candid Arts Trust Gallery. The exhibition went down really well and it was fantastic to see mine and the rest of my peers work up on the white walls, especially after putting many hours into the event. Below I have picked a couple of photographs from the night and the new on-line Exhibition Catalogue for people to look over.

Open publication

Old Boy - Screen Shots

Here are some work-in-progress screen shots from my latest university project, Old Boy. I am currently editing three clubs and societies I photographed looking at typology with in groups.

 

Poole Radio Yacht Club

 Battle Group South

 Netley Slot Car Club

Dissertation Note #2

Been doing some reading lately for my dissertation, I am still not 100% sure what I am going to be writing about, but I have a good feeling on what direction I want my essay to head towards. Here are few quotes and references that I am hoping to use in the final essay.

In an interview with Joerg Colberg, Benjamin Lowy states 

"what happens in NY and Iraq are separated by vast cultural, economic, and geographic differences, and getting people so disconnected to care about others is very hard." (Colberg, J. 2011)

Broomberg and Chanerin state on their website, 

"Crucially, for traditional photojournalism, is the fact that the three biggest news stories in recent years, September 11th, Abu Graib and the Tsunami, were all recorded by amateurs. Chris Boot made a joke during the Aperture discussion that these days if your photographs aren't good enough, you aren't far enough away. An inversion of Capa's famous quote. This strategy, of stepping back from the event and producing more reflective journalism, is a direct response to this new reality: that armed with a digital camera or mobile phone everyone is a photojournalist, in the traditional sense, reporting from the front line of life" (Lehan, J. 2006)

Colberg, J. (2011). A Conversation with Benjamin Lowy. [online] Available from: http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/extended/archives/a_conversation_with_benjamin_lowy/ [Accessed 17^th September 2011]

Lehan, J. (2006). Interview with Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin conducted by Joanna Lehan, assistant curator at the International Center of Photography, New York for the catalogue of ECOTOPIA, the second triennial of photography and video. 2006. [pdf] New York: International Center of Photography. Available from: http://choppedliver.info/pdf/lehan.pdf [Accessed 14th November 2011]

Dissertation Note #1

So now that I am into my final year I have to do my dissertation, it has been very difficult to think of a strong question that I want to ask, research and write about. I didn't want to go for something that was too easy for me to write about, as that would not teach me much about what I am interested in. I am still in the developing stage of my research but here are some photographers I have been looking at, they are not 100% going to be in my final piece but it shows the sort of work I am going to be looking at for the dissertation.


Each image is linked to the website I found them on, some of them have more of the photographers work or an article about the photographer.

Kevin Frayer

Balazs Gardi

Simon Norfolk

Luc Delahaye

Welcome

After neglecting my other weblog for sometime now and wanting to re-invent my the old one, I introduce you to my new blog that is nicely titled Matthew Walden The Blog. 

To get things started I thought I would first introduce myself, I am a photographer in training, currently into political, economical and environmental documentary and portraiture photography.

This weblog is going to be a little bit different from the other weblog I produced, it will have less inspirational work, but will have more written work and my own work and projects.

Below are some of my work, just a teaser of what I shoot, which you can find the rest of clicking the first photograph below.